Salt in the Pepper Shaker
by somethingsdont
Summary: BB. Salt shakers had more holes than pepper shakers, but that was irrelevant to functionality.


**Title**: Salt in the Pepper Shaker**  
Author**: Lucy (somethingsdont)**  
Pairing**: Booth/Brennan  
**Rating**: PG  
**Timeline**: 4.01, Yanks in the UK**  
Summary**: Salt shakers had more holes than pepper shakers, but that was irrelevant to functionality.**  
Notes**: I've only very recently picked up this show, so I hope that my inexperience with this fandom and pairing doesn't become too apparent in this fic. Enjoy!

* * *

Exactly two hours and fifty-three minutes after their flight left British soil, Temperance Brennan heard a familiar voice mutter a nearly-unintelligible phrase.

"I ate the pork chops."

Confused, Brennan looked up from the magazine she'd been reading and turned toward her partner in the seat next to her. Booth, however, was fast asleep, a tiny pillow wedged between his head and his headrest, a blanket draped down his chest and across his lap. Brennan shook her head and returned her attention to the magazine splayed across her pull-down tray, briefly considering the possibility that she'd merely imagined the words. She was exhausted, she reasoned to herself, and the brain had the uncanny ability to—

"Don't put salt in the pepper shaker."

Her eyes snapped to him again, and this time, she knew that she hadn't misheard. Booth was still unmoving, dead to the world, and Brennan's lips curled into a small smirk. Seeley Booth, FBI agent extraordinaire, talked in his sleep? Tremendously valuable knowledge, to be sure.

"Booth," she articulated, carefully studying his reaction as though it mattered to her how he looked in the process of awakening from slumber.

Booth's face scrunched up, and he shifted against his seat, but his eyes remained closed. "Tie it to the bedpost," he continued with the same incoherency, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings.

Brennan reached out and gently shook his shoulder. "Booth!"

That jarred him awake. "What?" he demanded, his voice gravelly from the remnants of sleep.

Brennan tried to ignore the way her body reacted to his drowsy tone. "You were talking in your sleep," she explained.

"What?" he ridiculed, denial coursing through his veins. He sat up straighter, his blanket falling gracelessly into a crumpled mess on his lap. "I don't talk in my sleep."

"I can't account for every other time you've fallen asleep," she acquiesced, "but you were just asleep, and you were talking, so I can only conclude that you do talk in your sleep."

"No, I—" He rubbed his eyes, but his curiosity got the best of him. "What did I say?"

Brennan raised an eyebrow. "Are you admitting that you talk in your sleep?"

Booth groaned, kicking his socked feet against the footrest. "No, Bones, I'm not admitting to anything."

Brennan watched him drum out a quick rhythm with his feet. "I ate the pork chops," she recalled.

His legs immediately ceased any movement. "What pork chops?" he asked, making a face. "Damn it, did I sleep through lunch?"

She had to smile. "No, that's what _you_ said in your sleep," she emphasized. "You said that you ate the pork chops."

He scoffed. "That's ridiculous."

"Maybe you were hungry," she assessed, turning back to her magazine. "Freud believed that dreams were an insight into people's unconscious desires."

"Since when do you believe anything Freud had to say?" he demanded. Without giving her a chance to answer, he continued, "And you know what? I don't even like pork chops."

"You didn't say that you _liked_ them," she countered, looking up briefly from her magazine. "You just said that you ate them."

"And yet I didn't eat any pork chops, Bones," he reasoned, "so I think you're hearing things."

"We should consult Sweets about this when we get back," she suggested.

"Sweets?" he asked, his voice rising to a trill. The passenger in the seat in front of him turned around in her seat and glared at him; he waited until she settled back down to continue. "Since when do we ever voluntarily give him a reason to analyze us?"

"Since you seem to think I'm lying about you talking in your sleep," she replied with the slightest hint of agitation.

"I believe you, Bones, all right?" He adjusted his pillow and leaned back against it. "Is that all I said?"

"No," she replied. "You also said, 'Don't put salt in the pepper shaker.'"

Booth took a moment to consider that. "I was obviously being logical. I mean, why would anyone want to put salt in the pepper shaker?"

Brennan closed her magazine, pushed up her tray and clicked it into place. "If salt was placed in the pepper shaker," she countered, "it would no longer be a pepper shaker, because the function of the apparatus would be to distribute salt, not pepper, thereby making it a salt shaker. They'd be putting salt in the salt shaker. In theory, you'd never have to tell anyone not to put salt in the pepper shaker."

"But salt shakers have more holes than pepper shakers," he argued with a cheeky grin, his point seemingly indisputable.

Brennan merely stared at him. "That's irrelevant to functionality."

Booth let out a sigh of frustration. "You know what, Bones? Arguing with you is like arguing with Chuck Norris."

"I don't know who that is," she deadpanned.

"Yeah, good thing, or you might threaten me with a roundhouse kick," he added sheepishly, holding out his balled fists as though he was a boxer.

Brennan's expression remained solid, unwavering. "I don't know what that means."

Booth punched at the air a few times before dropping his fists to his lap when he realized that he wasn't winning any points this way. He cleared his throat. "Let's move on."

Brennan nodded in acknowledgment. "The third thing you said was—"

"The _third_ thing?" Booth interrupted incredulously. "How long did you eavesdrop on my sleep talking?"

"I wasn't eavesdropping," Brennan replied indignantly, "and this was the last one: Tie it to the bedpost."

"Oh, now you're just making things up," he scoffed. "The pork chops, maybe, but this is just—"

"Bondage is a fairly common sexual practice," Brennan interrupted. "There's nothing to be ashamed about."

Booth nearly shot out of his seat. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a sec, Bones. I am not into that kind of stuff, okay?"

Brennan turned calmly to him. "You've never cuffed your partner to the bedpost?" she asked. "Your sex partner," she clarified unnecessarily, "not your work partner, because I would know about that."

"Not that it's any of your business," he replied, finding himself struggling with the words, "but no, I haven't." He adjusted himself uncomfortably on his seat, aware. "You look… surprised," he observed.

"You've never even thought about it?" Brennan pressed.

Booth's brows furrowed, and he didn't need to be told when he was treading dangerous territory. "Where is this going, Bones?"

Brennan wasn't one to back down, though she sensed they'd been here before, many times. She attempted logic. "Well, you carry around a pair of handcuffs with you wherever you go, except to bed?"

"I don't carry my gun to bed, either," he pointed out, studying her reaction but successfully reading very little. "Wait, are you disappointed?"

Brennan stiffened slightly. "Why would I be disappointed?" she dismissed. "Realistically, I'm not even having sex with you."

Booth nodded, though he was already conjuring up all types of dangerous images in his head. "Right."

"Hypothetically, though," she added as an afterthought, "that is a possibility."

Booth's eyes pierced hers. "Having sex with me?"

She shot him a look. "Being disappointed that you leave your handcuffs at the bedroom door," she elaborated.

He grinned in spite of himself. "Why would that matter if we're not having sex?"

"Well, it wouldn't," she answered simply, feeling the heat in her cheeks. "I'm just making an observation."

He nodded slowly, conceding. "Okay."

"Because, you know," she continued, on the short track to full-blown rambling, "we shouldn't have sex."

"I got that."

Internally, she squirmed. "We're not like Ian and Inspector Pritchard in that way," she explained, more to herself than anyone else. "I mean, protocol. There's protocol."

Booth nodded again. "Of course."

Her eyes locked with his. "So even if we wanted to, which we don't—" She searched him for confirmation.

"We don't," he echoed hesitantly.

"—we couldn't," she finished flatly, experiencing a protest in her chest that surprised her. "Or shouldn't, because couldn't implies that we're not morphologically capable of sex, which we obviously are."

"We're the salt and pepper shakers," he supplied.

Brennan frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."

"I was agreeing with you," Booth clarified.

"A more fitting analogy would probably have been more effective," she replied completely seriously.

Booth rolled his eyes. "I'll be sure to have my copy of Analogies for Dummies with me next time."

"Yeah," Brennan exhaled. "So we agree that we're between a stone and a tough place."

Booth chuckled. "A rock and a hard place, Bones. We're between a rock and a hard place."

"Oh."

Booth chuckled again, silently, his laughter growing in his belly until he couldn't hold it in any longer. The noises coming from him alarmed her at first, but she found herself unable to resist chuckling along. He pressed his pillow against her shoulder and buried his face into it, his muffled laughter vibrating against her skin; it tingled. She rested her head against his and waited until the sounds turned to silence, movements to tranquility, until they were nothing but two ordinary people on a plane, easily mistaken for lovers, but they weren't.

What they had was great, amazing. What they wanted was Everest. The only thing they truly needed, however, was the constant they'd long ago discovered in each other.

They'd never lose that.


End file.
